


Fixing Mistakes

by Cordria



Category: Danny Phantom
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-03
Updated: 2021-02-01
Packaged: 2021-03-13 13:56:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 8,904
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28529565
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cordria/pseuds/Cordria
Summary: Ever since Butch Hartman posted his video about his new OC "Flynn", I've been having THOUGHTS. These are my thoughts in story form. Uploading from Tumblr.
Comments: 48
Kudos: 129





	1. Chapter 1

Danny groaned and curled up in a ball, very suddenly awake. His head hurt, his leg sparkled sharp and painful, and he felt oddly sticky. “Ow, ow, ow, ow,” he hissed, a few swear words working their way through his teeth as he kicked his brain into trying to think through what was going on.

His eyes crept open, studying his surroundings. Dark. Quiet. Bars.

Bars?

His eyes opened just a touch more, turning his head. Bars on all sides. He was in a cage.

Memory flooded back into his brain - of the school bell ringing, of walking through the park with Sam, of cold rushing down his back, of an unfortunately successful ambush by the ghost world’s most annoying hunter. “Damn it, Skulker,” he whispered.

Having determined himself to be alone in the room full of cages, Danny sat up and slowly pushed fingers through his hair, searching for the source of the pain. It was from right over his left ear, a dull throbbing that was definitely sore, but no blood. Head trauma. Something that would heal with time, nothing to be done about it for now. 

He turned his attention to his leg, noting with a frown all the glowing blood smeared across the bottom of the cage. He poked and prodded at his leg, locating the worst of the damage: a huge slash down the side of his right leg. Almost as long as his fingers could spread, it was already mostly sealed over - thank Clockwork for not being knocked out until he was in ghost form. In human form, the blood loss would have killed him. 

The fact that a slash that big was almost sealed over made him wrinkle his nose. That had to have taken hours and hours. Perhaps overnight. He’d been out a long time.

He sighed. “I was having such a good day, too.” 

Although the cage wasn’t big enough to stand up in, he tried putting his foot on the ground and putting weight on his leg. Would he be able to stand once he’d gotten out of the cage? The pain sharpened, making him gasp and collapse. “Nope, nope, nope,” he whispered. “Ow, ow, ow, ow, don’t do that again.”

Blood started to ooze from the gash again. He’d broken open the scab. 

With a scowl, he pushed and pulled himself, maneuvering until he was leaning up against the door. From the fizzy feeling against his skin, knew they wouldn’t be something he could phase through. He’d have to find a different way out. He reached a hand out through the bars to pull at the padlock, studying it. It was the same type of padlock Skulker always used for locking his cages closed. The tiniest of smiles curled the corner of Danny’s lips. 

It wasn’t quite true that ghosts couldn’t learn. Skulker had learned new hunting techniques over the last eighteen months. Skulker had learned to keep Danny in human-proof cages. But ghosts learned so very slowly, and struggled with putting together facts they couldn’t see. Skulker knew Danny could get out of his cages - but, never having witnessed Danny perform the feat, couldn’t figure out how. And so he kept doing the same thing over and over.

Danny squirmed and moved around, digging a little box out of one of his pockets. Sam had gotten it for him for Christmas last year, along with lessons as to how to use it. Lock-picking was a skill Danny had assumed would be difficult, but it turned out to be hilariously easy, if a bit time consuming. Danny made sure he kept the kit with him.

It took longer than he’d hoped to open the lock. The pain from his leg kept distracting him and the hit he’d taken to his head was making it hard to focus. But he eventually placed all four of the tumblers, gave them a twist, and the lock fell open. 

He grinned, short and sharp, and worked the lock back through the rings on the cage, catching it before it could hit the ground. “Screw you, Skulker,” he whispered, pushing open the cage door and floating himself out, putting the lock into his pocket. He was careful to keep his leg from hitting the ground - even the smallest movements sent sharp shards into his mind. “I’m keeping this as a souvenir.”

Just before he was going to leave, Danny heard a sound from the corner. He tensed, instantly assuming Skulker had been hiding. The glow around Danny kicked up a notch with his anxiety, and he twisted around.

Nothing?

His hands came back down, letting the tenseness fade away. He floated forwards a few steps, noticing a cage far into the darkest corner of the room. There was the faintest glow coming from inside - it was almost like the afterglow of looking at a bright light for a moment too long. Too faint to be a ghost in any reasonable shape. “Hello?” he whispered.

“Mind if I borrow your lock pick set? I lost mine.”

Danny hesitated. The voice was very… human? And didn’t sound at all in pain or sick. The scratchy voice was also not bothering to whisper. “Who are you?” Danny asked, floating closer.

“I’m me, obviously.”

“Helpful,” Danny muttered, drawing up just close enough that if something were to lunge and reach through the cage, it wouldn’t be able to grab him. An odd scent tinged the air, making Danny’s nose wrinkle. He held up a hand, palm towards the thing in the cage, and upped the power flowing through his hand. The glow kicked up and, like a flashlight, illuminated the contents of the cage.

It was a human male, raising a hand to block his eyes from the glow. Red-orange hair raggedly pulled back into a ponytail and a beard that looked hacked short with a knife. Perhaps in his twenties, skinny and tall, and dressed in layers of rags. He had a cloak-looking blanket wrapped around him, and calloused feet wrapped in cloth that left his toes hanging out. Dried, reddish-colored flowers dangled everywhere from his clothes. Danny blinked at the man, startled. “You’re human.”

Teeth glittered as the man smiled - an easy, pleasant smile. At least two of the teeth were missing. “Mostly, anyways.” The scar-covered hand lowered. Eyes that were too bright and green to belong to a human peered at him, blinking against the light. “Lock picks? I’d like to get out of here before the hunter comes back.”

“Skulker’s annoying with his cages,” Danny agreed, lowering his hand and the light. His brain wasn’t working quite right. This… human?… was something like him? …How? “What happened?” 

“I was just a tad too slow. Lock?”

Danny glanced over his shoulder, noted the still-quiet room, and settled his body gently back down at the ground. It took a moment for the world to stop spinning from the pain. Then he opened up the little box of picks and started to work on the lock. It was easier from this side, where he could see what he was doing.

“How did it come to be that a ghost knows how to pick a lock?” the human asked.

“This ghost gets hunted a lot. Not the first time I’ve seen the inside of Skulker’s cages,” Danny muttered. “Friend got me the lock pick set.”

“A human lock pit set.”

Danny hummed. “And how did it come to be a human in the ghost zone?” There was a soft click. He twisted and yanked the lock off.Danny floated back up in the air, fighting a wince of pain, and nodded. 

“Very long story. Too long for telling inside this lair.” The human pulled himself out of the cage, unwinding his long limbs and stretching upright. From this close, Danny could see the young man was incredibly lean and tall. Too thin. Too tall. Even though Danny was floating, the man’s head was on level with his. Something was off with this human, and it made the hairs on the back of Danny’s neck raise. 

This close, Danny could see the dried flowers hanging around his neck were blood blossoms. Before Danny could float backwards and out of the way, the man reached out and clapped Danny on the shoulder, still with that same easy grin. “Thank you for the rescue.”

“Do you…” Danny hesitated, thinking about the fact that the man was a human and they were on a floating island haunted by a hunting ghost, “need a lift? Like, to get somewhere?”

“Away from here would be nice.” The human’s smile faded just a bit. He was studying Danny. “I’m not a flyer. I’d appreciate a lift to… anywhere, really, that’s not right here.”

Danny held out his hand. “You got a name, human?”

The man grabbed his wrist, his fingers burning hot against Danny’s cold skin. “Flynn.”

The feel of the blood blossoms tingled down his arm, an interesting counterpoint to the drums beating against his brain and the stabbing pain in his leg. Danny lifted the human off the ground and took the shortcut through the window, back out into the glowing green of the ghost zone. “Nice to meet you, Flynn. I’m Danny.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Part 2

Danny barely made it out of Skulker’s home range before the pain from his leg and the tooth-numbing tingle curling up his arm brought him to a stop. He dumped the strange human onto a floating spit of land none-too-gently and collapsed into a pile himself. “Ow, ow, ow,” he groaned, slowly straightening out his leg. Blood oozed everywhere. It felt like someone was stabbing a hot blade into his thigh. “Damn it.”

“That looks painful.”

Danny didn’t bother with a response. He scowled down at his leg, wishing he’d thought to put some sort of first aid kit in his pocket along with the lock pick set. The gash wouldn’t kill him - not unless he lost too much energy and turned human again, then it would kill him in short order, and he’d be a ghost again. The thought made him chuckle morosely.

Flynn’s hands touched his leg and Danny batted the fingers with a sharp hiss of pain. 

“Hey, hey, relax,” the man said, “I can help.” He pulled a roll of thin fabric out from his layers of clothing and wiggled it between his fingers. “See?” The fabric looked only slightly more clean than dirty. 

It took a few seconds for Danny’s pain-addled mind to realize what the human meant. Bandages. Danny drew back. “I don’t know,” he muttered, trying to decide if ghosts could get infections from used bandages. He’d only ever used the bright-white new ones from the first-aid kit.

“I know what I’m doing,” Flynn said. “Just… watch.” He plucked at one of the dried blood blossoms hanging around his neck, picking the little pollen-sacks off the ends of the stamens. 

Danny watched curiously as Flynn ground the pallen between his fingers, then reached over and sprinkled the pollen right into Danny’s wound. “Hey!” Danny yelped, pushing Flynn’s hand away. He tensed, waiting for the spike of agony. Blood blossoms hurt just being near - powdered and put in an open wound?

But the pain faded away.

“…Hey?” Danny repeated, confused.

“I know what I’m doing,” Flynn repeated blandly. He unrolled some of the bandages, maneuvered Danny’s leg up onto his, and started to carefully wind the bandages around Danny’s thigh, covering the gash. “You won’t get anywhere until that wound is bandaged.”

“How did you know that would work?” The pain in Danny’s head was starting to fade as well, being replaced by a weird spinning. 

Flynn hummed, his hands hot and sure as they wrapped the bandages tight enough to hold the gash closed. “I’ve lived here since I was ten. You learn some things.”

“No you haven’t.” The muscles in Danny’s back relaxed, and he laid back, resting his head on one of the rocks of the floating island. “Humans can’t live in here. No food, and whatever.” His voice felt strange. Like it would fly out of his throat and float away if he weren’t careful to keep his mouth shut.

“Yeah. Or you gotta get rescued by a decent ghost, one that can travel to the human world now and then and get you some food.”

Danny wasn’t sure he wanted to open his mouth again - he liked his voice and didn’t want it to leave. But there were glowing globs of blood floating in the air that caught his attention. They formed a path leading back to where they’d come from. Danny’s blood, floating in the microgravity of the ghost zone like stars, and he was entranced enough he forgot about his voice flying away. “I don’t believe you.”

Flynn shrugged, tied off the bandage, and set Danny’s leg back down. “Doesn’t matter.” He moved, shifting until he was sitting next to Danny. “Can I ask you a question?”

Tearing his eyes off the trail of blood bubbles, Danny glanced at Flynn. The human’s glittering, ghost-like eyes were entrancing. So out of place in a human. Impossible. Danny’s forehead furrowed as a third eye appeared on Flynn’s forehead. “What?”

“What are you?”

Danny blinked slowly, wondering if he’d grown a third eye too. It was the ghost world. Anything was up for grabs. “What?”

“You’re not really a ghost. I can tell.” Flynn’s three eyes narrowed, and the forehead eye vanished again. “So what are you?”

Fizzy bubbles popped in Danny’s brain, making his head feel like the inside of a can of soda. “Halfa.” Something tickled at the back of Danny’s mind. Something odd was happening to him. More so than just the pain disappearing. “Halfa-ghost.”

“And half human,” Flynn whispered.

Then a particularly large bubble popped, letting out the thought that had been percolating. Danny sat up, his head spinning at the sudden movement. “You drugged me!” he yelped. 

Flynn waved his hand with a scoff. “It’s already wearing off. You’re really half human?”

Danny pushed himself further away from the strange human. “I… I…” He hadn’t meant to say that. You don’t just tell people you’re a freak of nature. “You drugged me.” The words came out more petulantly than Danny’d expected. Pain started to etch up his leg and throb in his ear again, the fizzy bubbles fading away. 

“Look. I’m sorry.” The man smiled, but there was something tense in the twist of his lips. He spread out his hands and backed up. “I won’t do it again. I promise. I…” he hesitated. He fell quiet.

Danny scowled, crossing his arms and tentatively floating up in the air a few inches. The pain wasn’t too bad. With a bandaged leg, he’d be able to get home safely. Hide out for a day to give it time to heal, and then head home and put out whatever fires his absence had caused. 

Of course, in exchange for getting the wound bandaged, he’d told this complete stranger his most closely kept secret - the one that would get him killed if it got out. 

There was an odd look to Flynn’s eyes. Something distant. Then they blinked and the glow kicked up a notch, focusing. “I happen to be in the market for some information.” He stood up, brushing bits of dirt off his dirty clothes, and stuffing hands into his pockets. “Up for a trade?”

Startled by the quick change in the human’s personality, Danny frowned and floated back to the edge of the island. “Like what?”

“I’m looking for a portal to the human world.”

“Why should I care?” Danny muttered, shaking his head to dislodge the last of the odd feeling in his brain. He didn’t really mean it the way it sounded - he did care about the human getting out of the ghost zone - but he was still busy trying to process the fact that Flynn knew he was half human. What was he going to do?

He didn’t have time to contemplate the answer to his question. Flynn’s eyes narrowed as he pulled a crystal out of his robes. It glowed brightly, a crystalline green that lit up the entire area. The crystal’s light pulsed and swelled, turning the palm-sized object into a long staff with the brilliant glowing crystal (now the size of Danny’s head) perched at the end. The ridges and edges looked razor sharp. Flynn shifted the staff in his hands, the crystal humming as the staff spun in a circle. Danny could feel its power thrumming against his core.

Very, very suddenly, Flynn had gone from some odd human curiosity to something very, very dangerous. Danny froze.

The man moved, much quicker than a human should be able to. The staff caught Danny in the side and tossed him onto the ground. Rocks pressed painfully into his back and the crystal end of the staff came to rest on Danny’s chest. The sharp ridges sliced into his clothing, a hair’s-breadth from cutting his skin. Flynn’s clothing had moved enough to see more crystals on his body - glowing and bright, woven into cords that spiraled around his arms and sewed into his layers of clothing. This time, the tooth-gapped smile appearing on the human’s face looked savage. “I’m looking for a portal to the human world,” Flynn repeated. “And you’re going to tell me where to find one.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Part 3

“Woah, woah, woah,” Danny said, trying to shuffle backwards, scraping his head against the hard ground and letting out a hiss when the movement caused a sharp pain in his leg. 

He was rapidly rethinking how he felt about this human. It was gut-jarring, realizing that he’d run into yet another human-ghost hybrid, only for it to be another Vlad. Putting on a nice show at the beginning, then showing his true colors when Danny was off-kilter. 

Blinking away the hurt from that revelation, he ran through escape plans in his head. The floating island had too much ectoranium in it - phasing down was out of the question. He didn’t want to think about what phasing through that strange glowing crystal might do to him. Attacking the human felt wrong (despite the fact that he was currently pinned down), and Flynn moved too quickly to make running a likely option, although Danny figured if he could get out of reach, he’d be golden. Probably. Hopefully. As long as that crystal couldn’t shoot anything. That left talking himself out of the current situation. 

He mentally winced. His mouth was really good at goading other people into attempting to punch him. Not so much into talking people into letting him go. “Why are you doing this?”

“I’m out of options,” Flynn said quietly. The man’s eyes were hard and cold as a ghost, empty of emotions. “And even if your mind is gone, you’re still partly human; you know how to find a portal.”

“What makes you think that?” Danny shot back.

“You’re too healthy.”

“Healthy?” Danny blinked, again trying to scuttle backwards, but Flynn followed his every movement. The crystal never moved from its place hovering just above Danny’s core. “What does healthy have to do with anything? And what do you mean by my mind is gone?”

Flynn cocked an eyebrow. “You’ve got too much human in you to be able to exist on what you can find here. You’d be skinny and weak if you weren’t eating human food regularly.”

Danny found himself staring at Flynn’s hands and arms. Beneath the layers of rags and the twisting, glowing crystals, Flynn’s arms were dangerously thin. The muscles, bones, and tendons stood out through the skin. Danny’s gaze bounced back up to Flynn’s face. ‘Out of options’ echoed around in Danny’s mind. Perhaps this wasn’t some odd, Vlad-like creature attacking him for no reason. Perhaps this was a starving human, desperate for a way out, trying to deal with a sarcastic teenager too busy licking his wounds to realize what was really going on. “Oh,” he whispered.

“And if you had a human mind, I could reason with you. But you don’t appear to.” The human’s fingers tightened around the glowing staff. Energy built up in the crystal, causing it to hum in a jarring way, making Danny’s already-throbbing head scream in pain. “So we do this a different way.”

“Wait,” Danny said through gritted teeth, “I…” He hesitated. Did he really want to admit to this stranger how human he was? Flynn already knew enough to get him into some serious trouble. “I know where there’s a portal. I’ll give you a ride.”

Flynn’s arms didn’t relax. The crystal didn’t move. “I’m not sure I trust you,” Flynn said, his voice soft and dangerous. 

“I promise,” Danny yelped, squirming as the crystal’s hum built up in the shadows of his bones, causing his whole body to ache. It stabbed painfully into the wound on his leg. He gasped. He’d have to start fighting back, take the chance that he wouldn’t hurt Flynn too much - he couldn’t take this much longer. “I-”

The crystal vanished. 

Danny blinked blurriness out of his eyes, scrambling backwards to the edge of the island. His body shook from the remembered pain as Flynn towered over him, the butt end of the staff resting by Danny’s feet and the crystal balancing against Flynn’s shoulder. From this view, the human seemed even taller and more menacing than before. “You didn’t need to do that,” Danny snapped. “I was going to bring you home.”

When Flynn took another step forward, Danny scuttled back a bit further, purposefully drifting off the edge of the island and hovering just out of reach. Flying made the wound on his leg tug and pull, but the slight pain was better than being close to the unpredictable human. 

Flynn let out a snort and smiled. “No, you wouldn’t’ve. You don’t care about me. You can’t care about anyone-”

“Then why did I bother rescuing you from the cage?” Danny interrupted. Perhaps he could talk this human into trusting him again.

A third voice interrupted their conversation. “That’s a good question. One I’d like an answer to.”

Danny spun around, looking up towards the sounds of rockets. “Skulker,” Danny greeted with a scowl. “I was wondering where you were.”

“You let out my pet, and just before I’d broken it. Now I’ll have to start over.” Skulker bared its teeth, metal fangs gleaming in the light. “You seem to enjoy destroying all my hard work.”

“I have a problem with things in cages,” Danny snapped back, trying to determine how much energy was left in him for fighting with Skulker. Very little. Dangerously little. “Especially when one of them is me.”

There were beeping noises when Skulker touched its arm, then a whirring noise. Four glowing orbs appeared out of slots on the robot’s shoulders, floating silently near Skulker’s head.

Danny tensed, vaguely remembering those from when Skulker had captured him earlier. “Didn’t have a chance to ask earlier… what are those?”

“A little upgrade from Plasmius,” Skulker gloated, “designed specifically to make your life miserable.” It gestured towards the island. “My pet was just a bonus nobody was expecting. I was going to turn him into a rug, if I couldn’t get him properly trained.”

Flynn snorted, leaning against his staff with that same easy grin he’d given Danny earlier. Despite the loose posture, Flynn’s eyes had a dangerous, hard glow to them. “I’d like to see you catch me again, now that I can see you coming.”

“Humans are more annoying than challenging,” Skulker said.

Danny’s gaze flipped from Flynn to Skulker and back. Why was Skulker bantering instead of showing off what the new weapon could do? It wasn’t typical for the robotic ghost, and little sirens were going off in Danny’s head. The three orbs around Skulker’s pulsed and gleamed.

“Wait, three?” Danny hissed under his breath. “One’s missing!”

There was barely a moment to tense before the missing orb zipped around a rock and slammed into the back of Fynn’s head. The human let out a strangled noise as the orb quickly enveloped his head, the crystals across his body flaring and flashing as Flynn went limp and collapsed.

Danny jerked away from Flynn, startled. The human’s chest still moved slowly and steadily - unconscious, rather than dead.

“I owe Plasmius a great deal for this unique device. Perfect for human-ghost hybrids.” Skulker was practically purring. “I wasn’t expecting the chance to try it out on two of you, of course. I’m surprised it worked on my pet - it was supposed to be coded to your DNA. But who am I to look a gift horse in the mouth?” The ghost’s fingers flicked and the remaining three orbs vanished. “Enough talking. Let’s play catch.”

Danny didn’t have enough energy reserves left to fight Skulker. He would have to race Skulker’s orbs to the portal and hope he was faster. “What if I don’t want to?” Danny shot back, drifting close to Flynn’s limp form, trying to buy a few seconds of time. His fingers wrapped around Flynn’s bony ankle, the jangle of the blood blossoms instantly causing his hand to go numb. But he wasn’t going to leave the human behind.

“Don’t care,” Skulker growled. 

Kicking off the island caused a spike of pain in his leg. Gritting his teeth, Danny shot straight for home. He didn’t have enough energy left to dodge and do anything fancy - he would simply have to hope he was faster than the orbs. He poured everything he had into speed, pushing himself faster and faster and faster.

The ghost’s scream of fury echoed around the ghost zone behind them. 

Something fizzled past his ear and Danny jerked to the side. He risked a moment to glance to the side and behind him - two of Skulker’s orbs were impaled on Flynn’s crystal staff. The human had somehow gotten free of the one that had captured him and was studying their surroundings. The other two orbs flickered and flashed around them.

Flynn shot him a glare. “Focus on flying straight!” he yelled. “I got the things!”

Fighting against the growing throb in his head and the screaming in his leg, Danny set his gaze on the portal. To Danny’s eyes, it gleamed like a little star way off in the distance. “Please don’t let me be sorry I’m trusting you,” he murmured, then stepped up the speed a touch more.

One of the orbs zipped right in front of them and Danny twisted out of the way, never slowing his mad dash towards home.

“I said straight!” Flynn called. “I can’t get the things if you move around!”

“You want to crash into an island at several hundred miles an hour when I get knocked out?” Danny snapped.

“I would have gotten it. Trust me!”

Danny ground his teeth and bit back his retort. He didn’t have time for it. He could feel the strain on his core from the energy drain, and the sharp pull was starting to make his vision wobble. A timer was running on how much longer he could keep up their flight - a timer that was ticking down very quickly. He tried to gauge how much further it was to the portal. 

It would be close. 

Blocking out everything else, Danny flew. When something buzzed close, Danny had to tense his muscles painfully to keep from flinching. He didn’t have the energy left to check, but whatever it was, and however close it had gotten, it didn’t hit him.

His vision started to turn black at the edges, his focus narrowing on the only thing that mattered: getting home. Getting safe. If only they could get to the portal, the random collection of anti-ghost devices and shields would stop Skulker’s orbs in their tracks. Probably, anyways. If they didn’t make it, Danny wasn’t positive either of them would wake up again.

Flynn yelled something, but Danny had no energy left to devote to listening. The portal was right there. Right there. Right…

Right…

Right…

He blinked back to reality, lying on his back on something hard and rough. His arms and legs felt like limp noodles. His core fluttered in a way that felt very fragile. “Ow,” he whispered, not sure if was able to move.

Green eyes and long, red-orange hair suddenly filled his vision. “You okay?”

Danny groaned, his mouth moving through some nonsense syllables. 

Flynn grinned at him, holding out his staff. Four orbs were skewered on the long stick. “I got all four of them.” The orbs were flickering like fireworks, appearing to slowly shrink in size. The staff vanished from view as the human stood up. “Where are we?”

Pushing enough energy into his limbs, Danny rolled over and sat up. The world darkened dangerously for a moment. A sharp breath hissed out from between his teeth as everything spun in circles.

The human stood next to Danny on a little spit of an island, staring at the Fenton portal. They’d made it. Danny stared at it too - although his stare was bleary and in the hope it would help everything else settle down. His brain mushily pushed around thoughts, trying to come up with an answer. “It’s the portal,” is what he attempted to say. He wasn’t sure how successful it was.

“I got that it’s a portal,” Flynn muttered. “Why is it…” He stopped, gestured randomly with his hands. “Why is it like that?”

Danny knew what the man meant. All the anti-ghost technology installed in the portal gave the whole place a haunted, dangerous, stay-away feeling. If either of them had been a true ghost, it would have been a nearly impossible feeling to fight against. It wasn’t a real threat, however; they just had to ignore it and walk through the portal. Unfortunately, his brain wasn’t working well enough to explain it. 

Instead, he focused on getting to his feet. He wasn’t safe until he got through the portal. Skulker was powerful enough to fight the technological no-go zone.

“This the portal you were talking about?” 

“Yes,” Danny said. “Help me up.”

Flynn reached down an arm and pulled Danny to his feet, keeping a firm grasp on Danny’s shoulder when it was obvious Danny wasn’t going to be able to stand on his own. 

An image of his bed firmly in his mind - warm, soft blankets and a thick, welcoming pillow - Danny tried to head towards the portal. Flynn’s strong fingers held him back. The human wasn’t moving. “It’s fine. Let’s go,” Danny said.

“I don’t… I don’t know…”

“I promise.” Danny attempted to move forwards again, pulling against Flynn’s hand. “Come on. I wanna go home.”

This time, Flynn’s feet moved. Danny didn’t have the mental stability or energy to think through what was going through Flynn’s head as they walked forwards; Danny just wanted to get home. He pulled and tugged against Flynn every time the man slowed. 

They reached the edge of the portal. The center glowed and swirled like fog, the edges lightning sharp and crackling. An angry shout rippled through the ghost zone behind them as Skulker finally caught up enough to see them.

Danny used the sudden flood of adrenaline to power his body through the portal. He felt the human world surround him with warmth and pressure, heavy and solid, as he limping through the tunnel and dropped to the ground in the basement lab. He almost turned himself human again, just out of the relief of being home. 

The portal murmured behind him. Flynn was coming through. Danny struggled to his feet again, intent on turning on the shield the second Flynn was through. They didn’t need Skulker in the lab.

When Flynn tumbled to the ground in the lab, Danny hit the button, heard the shield snap into place, and grinned. “We made it,” he said.

The human made an odd, gurgling noise.

“Flynn?” Danny stumbled over to him, curious and worried. What was wrong? Instead of looking happy to be in the human world, Flynn was struggling, making tiny, spasm-like motions with his body, and looking terrified. “What’s wrong? Get up.”

Flynn hissed an inaudible response. His face was pale, his chest rising and falling in quick shallow gasps.

“Flynn?” Danny whispered, his weary mind pushing something around about the effects of low gravity on astronauts. 

Before he could complete the thought, something whined next to his ear - sharp, high-pitched, and familiar. A charging ectogun. 

Danny closed his eyes with a groan. In all his focus on getting away from Skulker, he’d completely forgotten about his parents.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Part 4

“Uh… hi?” Danny peered up at his mother’s face, past the sharp glow of the charged ectogun pointed at their feet, and went for a puppy-like smile. The lights were off in the lab, the computers shut down, and his mother was illuminated only by the glow of the portal. She was still wearing her lab clothes, but there were dark circles under her eyes. The alarms must have brought her back down to the lab long after she’d finished for the day. 

What time was it? And where was his father? Danny glanced around the empty lab.

The whine of the gun kicked up a notch, taking on a painful note. “Explain.” Her voice was tight and tense. The unspoken truce between them was holding. Likely by a thread. A thread that was unraveling fast, by the hardening expression on her face.

He watched her gaze jump from Danny to Flynn and back. What was going through her mind? One human-ish thing lying on the floor and a ghost that was barely holding himself together. Danny shuffled over to Flynn and dropped to his knees. “It’s not what it looks like,” he sputtered, then mentally winced because he wasn’t sure what it looked like. “I…”

Flynn made an odd, gurgling, gasping noise. Danny glanced down. The human’s eyes were wide and scared.

Danny stared at him. The intense throbbing in his brain was preventing him from thinking straight. “I…” he trailed off again, shaking his head and closing his eyes. That was a mistake - without sight to hold the world still, everything felt like it started to spin. There was a shuffling noise and Danny pried his eyes back open. “I…”

Maddie had settled down on her knees next to Flynn, and had rolled him onto his side. “You need to explain, and now,” she said. Her voice was sharp, having taken on the same sort of tone she used when Jack was doing something dangerous in the lab. It was the same tone that had threatened him with dissection and experiments dozens of times over the last year.

Instinct reacted to the sound, kicking his brain into gear and screaming to get away.

Uncoordinated muscles jerked his body away from her. Flying away was out of the question - he wasn’t sure he could pull off a hover, much less a complex dodging maneuver while phasing through a ceiling. Running away was unlikely as well. His leg hurt too much to do more than a slow hobble.

He flicked a glance down at Flynn. Besides, he couldn’t leave Flynn here by himself. 

That left - for not the first time in less than an hour - talking his way out of the situation. Danny let out a breath, mentally shoring himself up for what was bound to be a difficult conversation. He’d have to be very careful with his words or his mother would find out about two creatures on the ghost-human hybrid spectrum. 

“He’s dying,” she snapped.

Danny blinked, thrown off-kilter. “What?”

“He can’t breathe. He’s dying.” She was talking through clenched teeth, a specific sort of sharpness Danny had never seen before glittering in her eyes. “What. Is. Going. On?” 

“Dying?” Danny whispered, studying the strange human. Flynn’s face was very pale, his eyes unfocused and staring. Panic caused the words to tumble out of Danny’s mouth, words barely coherent through the pounding in his head. “This is Flynn. He’s a… a human. Been trapped in the ghost zone since he was ten… I think…” Danny trailed off, oddly fascinated by the transformation happening to his mother’s face. 

First there’d been surprise. Then confusion had leaked in, with anger following on his heels. Now her mouth was falling open; she looked startled. “Flynn?” she whispered. And… happy? 

Why was she happy? Wasn’t Flynn dying?

Danny watched in growing confusion as his mother set down her weapon. “Mo-addie?”

“Flynn,” she said, carefully touching his face. Her fingers fluttered over the human’s chest as he struggled to breathe. “Flynn. It’s okay. It’s okay. We got you.”

“He’s-” Danny started. 

“Back in the ghost zone,” Maddie interrupted. “He needs to go back.” Then she was on her feet, heading for the controls for the ghost shield.

The initial flash of adrenaline from their encounter was wearing thin. Danny watched his mother fiddle with the controls, knowing that she was doing something wrong, but the fog in his brain was preventing him from figuring out exactly what. “Wait…” he murmured. “Wait…”

The shield clicked off. 

Memory clicked in Danny’s brain. “No! Turn it back on!” In his panic, he managed to fly just long enough to push his mother out of the way and slam his hand back down on the button. The painful drain on his core made the world go dark for a moment, his whole body feeling fuzzy as he dropped to his knees. 

“He’s dying in here,” his mother said furiously. “The gravity-”

“Skulker is right there,” Danny interrupted. He stared at his mother, trying to blink her back into focus. Why wouldn’t his eyes focus? “He’ll kill us all if he gets in here.”

Maddie stood still for a long second, then slammed her hands down on the table with a loud shout of frustration. “There’s got to… there’s got to…” she turned around in circles, arms moving in frantic little movements, muttering to herself. “There’s… yes. That could work. It has to work. It’s the only option.”

Danny watched, shifting so his back leaned against the wall, as the blurry image of his mother grabbed random items from around the lab and set them in front of the portal. It was only a matter of thirty or forty seconds before his mother started pressing buttons on the new, cobbled-together thing. 

“Hold…” she breathed. “You have to hold.” The machine buzzed, hummed, and a shield burst into existence. It was some sort of uni-directional shield, a circular shield pushing up against the portal. “It works,” she said. “It works. Turn off the shield.”

It didn’t sound like a good idea, but Danny knew better than to stand between his mother and what she was doing. Besides, she knew enough about Skulker to know if her new shield would be able to handle the ghost. It took a second for Danny to get himself turned around and focused on the buttons, but he managed the right combination of button-pushes with his numb fingers. 

The shield flickered off.

He watched as his mother pushed the new device into the portal, stretching the extension cord tight. She reappeared through the swirling mist, grabbing Flynn’s arms. “I got you,” she said, dragging his limp, pale form into the portal. “You’ll be okay.” They disappeared into the fog.

Danny pushed himself to his feet, feeling the world twirl and tremble, and stumbled over to the portal. He held onto the wall, legs like noodles and hands oddly fizzy around the edges. He rested his head against the cold metal and squinted into the green. Flynn lay on the floor inside of the portal, right next to the edge of the ghost zone. The home-made shield glistened just past him, cutting the lab off the ghost world from the ghost’s end of the portal. Maddie was crouched next to Flynn, holding his hand. “Do you know him?” Danny whispered, teetering back and forth. “How could you know him?”

The strange human moved, shifting and coughing, then slowly sat up. Maddie helped him move, leaning him against the inside edge of the portal. Danny could see their mouths moving, but couldn’t hear anything they were saying. 

The relief at seeing Flynn moving around made Danny feel like he was floating. He stood still for a long few seconds, enjoying the feeling flooding through his brain.

Then his whole body jerked, like he’d fallen in a dream and suddenly woke himself up. He blinked and pushed away from the wall. Now that he knew Flynn would be okay, he needed to get out of here. It would only be a minute or two before his mother realized he was still there and a conversation would happen. One Danny’s brain was in no position to handle.

He needed to get some sleep. Recharge. Think through what to say, because saying something would be inevitable.

A shift of his weight on his leg spiked pain into his brain. He hissed and glanced down - brilliant green was leaking through the bandage on his leg. Get some rest as a ghost. No turning human until the gash on his leg had healed. 

Danny slowly made his way up the stairs, not caring that he was about to collapse into his own bed as a ghost. Hopefully it’d be a good twelve hours before anyone would think to check on him.


	5. Chapter 5

Danny did not get twelve hours of sleep. He got about four - and at least three of those were simply due to the fact that he was too unconscious to notice the commotion going on downstairs.

He groaned and curled up into a ball, squeezing his eyes shut and wrapping his arms over his head. The slams, bangs, and sounds of screaming machinery coming from the other parts of the house drilled into his ears. At some point in the last few hours, the main ghost shield around the house had been flipped on - the buzzing tingle was making his bones ache. And his home smelled like a cheap restaurant. He wrinkled his nose, fighting off the delicious/disgustive clash that the smell of human food caused his ghost form. 

“Enough,” he moaned, curling into a smaller ball and pulling the blanket over his head. All he really wanted to do was go back to sleep, but his senses were too sharp while he was in ghost form. The cacophony of sounds and smells from downstairs prevented all his efforts to drift back off to dreamland. 

After about fifteen minutes of lying still, he realized he had to give up. During the best of times, sleeping didn’t come natural when he was in ghost form, and it would be impossible with everything going on in his house. 

He sat up, head spinning fuzzily as he stared around his room. He was alone, door still locked, sunlight just barely beginning to peek over the horizon. The alarm clock read 5:43. “Ugh,” he groaned, running his hands through his hair, wincing when he touched the sensitive spot on his head. He stretched, feeling his sore body creak and twinge with every movement. He’d be feeling yesterday for days. “Why is everybody up already?”

A sharper jerk in his leg brought his attention down to the gash on his leg. Slowly unraveling the bandages, he poked at the wound. While it was sore and painful to the touch, it was sealed over and healing. “Good start,” he muttered. Gritting his teeth, he poked the red slice harder, trying to determine if it was healing underneath the surface too. He gasped at the sharp pain, closing his eyes tight and holding his breath to prevent himself from making any noise. The last thing he needed was his parents to hear him right now and realize he was awake. 

He finally let out the breath he was holding, allowing a nearly silent, “ow, ow, ow,” to slip out between his teeth. It hurt, but it wasn’t the hot knife feeling of yesterday - hopefully that meant it’d started to heal all the way down and he could turn human again without risking internal bleeding. He’d heal faster as a ghost, but he’d rest and recharge faster as a human. And right now, he needed the rest more than anything.

He took several deep breaths and closed his eyes. This tired and beat up, this was going to hurt.

The fizzing of the transformation made every muscle and bone in his body scream, and Danny had to bite down hard to prevent himself from making noise. It was an agonizingly slow process - the half-second of time feeling like it was minutes - as his damaged ghost form transformed phantom injuries into bruises, scrapes, and sprains. He tensed as the transformation reached his head, the process of restructuring his bruised brain momentarily feeling like a car hitting him at full blast.

Finally it was done. He opened his eyes, trying to focus through tears, realizing he was staring up at the ceiling and lying on his back on the floor. “Huh,” he whispered. Perhaps he had passed out. 

The world spun dangerously and Danny rolled slowly onto his stomach, closing his eyes and breathing deeply to prevent his stomach from retching up the nothing he’d eaten yesterday. “Ow,” he hissed. “Ow, ow.”

Hard footsteps banging on the floor made Danny groan, “Not now.” Swear words danced around in his spinning mind. He hadn’t been as quiet as he’d thought - this sounded like his father’s feet.

“Danny?” came a shout as the footsteps slid to a stop outside Danny’s door. Yep. It was his dad.

“I’m fine,” Danny yelled, wincing as he realized how coarse his voice was. “Nightmare.”

The doorknob rattled. “Your door’s locked,” Jack said.

“I’m fine,” Danny reiterated. He had no idea what he looked like, and he certainly didn’t want his dad seeing him before he could find a mirror. And take a shower. And get some more sleep. Perhaps some of the food - which still smelled delicious-disgusting, but now for a new reason. He was somehow starving and on the verge of throwing up at the same time. “Go ‘way.” He sat up, his muscles twinging and the world tipping sideways from the effort. He slammed his eyes back shut. It was better when he couldn’t see.

There were a few moments of silence - just long enough for Danny to wonder if he’d left - before his father spoke again. “When’d you get in last night?”

Danny wasn’t sure. It’d been very late when he’d gotten up to his room, but he hadn’t bothered to study the time. Too late. Way past his curfew. He squeezed his eyes shut even tighter, unsure as to what excuse would fly this morning. His father was normally much more gullible than his mother, but Danny wasn’t in top form right now. His best hope was the fact that his father was up before six; likely the man was as awake as he was. “Not too late,” he finally settled on. “I was at Sam’s working on a project.”

“Danny…” 

He winced. There was an odd tone to his father’s voice. Perhaps the man wasn’t buying the brush-off. Perhaps they’d called Sam last night looking for him. Perhaps-

“Danny, we need to talk.” 

Danny gritted his teeth. He didn’t want to talk. He wanted to go back to sleep. Correction: he wanted a snack, then go back to sleep. But he was too tired to come up with a good way to put off this conversation. He tried (and failed) to keep the whine out of his voice. “It’s not even six in the mor-”

“Danny.” There was something in his dad’s voice that made Danny stop and blink himself a bit more awake. Dread made the hairs on Danny’s neck stand up. Had they already talked with Sam’s family? Come up with some ideas on Danny’s less-than-perfect humanity?

“Let me go take a shower first…?” 

“Then head downstairs,” Jack agreed. “Fifteen minutes.”

“Fine,” Danny grumbled through a yawn. Fifteen minutes wasn’t nearly enough time. But at least it wasn’t right now. It would give him time to get himself looking less like he’d been hunted down, trapped, and threatened with skinning. “Go ‘way now please.”

Footsteps retreated from his door and Danny relaxed, closing his eyes, and found himself trying to fall asleep sitting up. He was exhausted and feeling it in every atom of his being. His brain sleepily meandered from topic to topic, his body wavering right on the brink of falling back asleep while sitting upright. 

Then he remembered Flynn. 

His body jerked and his eyes popped open. “Oh, yeah,” he muttered. That’s what his father was wanting to talk to him about - random human found in the ghost zone after ten years. Something Danny, of course, would know nothing about, having gotten in late from working on homework with Sam. He buried his face in his hands and scrubbed at his eyes. “I’m not awake enough to play this game,” he mumbled.

It took a long few minutes for Danny to maneuver himself onto shaky legs. He stood still, weaving back and forth, and seriously debated going back to bed despite the knowledge his father would be back soon. This was the sort of ‘emergency’ Danny would be expected to help solve, rather than sleep through. But he wasn’t sure he had enough energy to walk to the bathroom, much less to get down to the lab and work his way through a conversation where he’d have to play at surprise and lack of understanding. 

“How could a human live in the ghost zone?” he grumbled, trying to parrot a question he’d no doubtedly have to ask. Even to his own, half-asleep ears, he didn’t sound realistic. HIs shoulders slumped. “This is going to go badly.”

He stumbled over to the door, peeked out in the hallway, then careened on limp legs to the bathroom. He turned on the water, debating between luxurious warmth or frigidly cold, and sighed. No warm steam today. He didn’t want to risk falling asleep and drowning in the shower.

That’d be a horrible way to go. Imagine the rest of eternity… having died in the shower… after all he’d managed to survive.

Twisting the knob a few more degrees colder still, Danny took off his clothes, stared blankly at the blood stains and the new rips in his jeans, and sighed. He bundled them up and tossed them in the corner to be brought back to his room and disappeared. 

He could feel the cold mist of the shower even before he got in. He closed his eyes, gritted his teeth, and stepped forwards. 

The shower was short. Very short. But by the end of it, Danny had (less) ectoplasm crusted on his legs, his hair didn’t look (as much) like he’d just been captured and hunted, and he looked (slightly) more awake. “If only it would last,” he whispered as he studied his face in the mirror, trying to imagine away the bruise around his left eye that looked like it would turn into a black eye. 

He stood up straight, squared his shoulders, and tried to psych himself up for the next conversation. The freezing shower had bought him a half-hour of lucidity. Perhaps an hour, depending on how much his adrenaline responded to what was about to happen. He let out a short breath, snagged his pile of dirty clothes, and headed back to his room wrapped in a towel.

A few minutes later, Danny found himself carefully slinking down the stairs to deal with his parents and Flynn. His fingers stayed wrapped tightly around the railing, for the world still tipped to the side now and then. The living room was empty, as was the disastrous mess of the kitchen. Dirty pots and pans cluttered everywhere, and lukewarm food scraps littered plates all over the table. Danny stood next to the table, fingers curled around the back of the chair, debating whether or not grabbing some food was a good idea. His stomach grumbled, but every time the room spun, his stomach switched from ‘I’m hungry’ to ‘I’m going to vomit’.

“Danny? That you?” came the voice of his mother from the basement.

Danny’s nose wrinkled and he took a deep breath. “Surprise!” Danny breathed to himself. “Act surprised, act surprised, act surprised...”

He headed down the stairs to the lab, going a bit more slowly than usual to make sure of his footing. The food smells permeated down here as well. Danny’s stomach grumbled again as he paused and studied the lab. His parents were a flurry of motion, seeming to be doing a hundred random tasks at once. Flynn was sitting just inside the portal, plates of food sitting around him. 

“Act surprised,” Danny whispered one last time as he carefully stepped off the last step and met Flynn’s gaze. He tried to imagine what his expression should be.

“Danny! There you are. Come help me with this,” his mother said. “And… oh, Danny, what happened to you?!?”

Danny wasn’t listening to her. He felt the world fall apart around him as Flynn stared back at him with dawning recognition. “Oh no,” Danny whispered. 

Nobody had told Flynn to act surprised.


End file.
